


Aftermath

by Jyou_no_Sonoko



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss, Shock, because it's too soon, bereavement, but tbh not too much comfort, marith, technically, tho not exactly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:12:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jyou_no_Sonoko/pseuds/Jyou_no_Sonoko
Summary: Mary awakens to a shaken Lilith at the foot of her bed, and learns a terrible truth.
Relationships: Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith & Original Mary Wardwell, Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith/Original Mary Wardwell
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14
Collections: Marithember2020





	Aftermath

It may have been the sunlight passing through lace or the slight movements a breathing body makes on bedsprings, but whatever the cause, Mary roused to a shape at the end of her bed, fuzzy darkness which resolved itself into the First Woman when instinctive apprehension had her quickly retrieving her glasses from the bedside table.

“Where did you go?” Her first words after six hours were far from clear, though anxiety had fully woken her mind, even if the cause was as yet unknown.

Lilith wouldn't reply for a while – could not, Mary believed, by the way her spine and shoulders negotiated the act of speech – but when she did, it was in a voice recently drowned, many times over.

“Hell.”

For no routine errand.

Mary turned down the duvet, hoping Lilith would notice and consider lying down beside her, but the witch's gaze remained separated by a tousled mane.

“Why?” Any sort of answer would be a start, specifics weren't required.

Lilith took a deep breath and yet still spoke breathlessly. “I received a message. From a demon in my employ.”

The pounding of Mary's heart felt like an echo of Lilith's, sent through the witch's ribcage to assail one far more vulnerable.

“What?” A more defined question, and she was willing to use others as needed; Lilith always answered her eventually, but often in the form of micro-replies, which Mary would thread together like glass beads.

“They succeeded. In carrying out their mission.”

“What... what mission?”

“An investigation. A search.” Then she turned, and Mary was glad for the dim light. “Even having lived there for much of my life, even having been its queen, Hell is...” again out of breath, Lilith had to stop and pant, her words returning in trembling exhaustion. “So very vast. There's... there's so much of it. It's Damnation, virtually... virtually without end.”

Mary could barely breathe herself, lightheadedness blooming, and she moved forward to put a hand on Lilith's shoulder, resting her forehead there too out of necessity.

“What were they searching for?” she said into dark silk, and ringlets which smelt of unnatural flames.

Against her forehead, she felt Lilith's body revolt against the question, one which she had to have foreseen, but dreaded answering even so.

“Lilith,” she urged. “Please. What did they find?”

Out of vision, Lilith's hand found Mary's where she supported herself on the bed, lifted it to a cheek which was cold and dry, despite the warmth of the room, moved it to lips which shaped words and failed at them, leaving oily lipstick traces across Mary's knuckle.

One of the words touched her hand with distinction and she sucked in air and jasmine scent that was laid low under brimstone.

“No,” she whispered.

Lilith only nodded and Mary's fingers spread across a face wrought instantly taut and quaking, across the chilled ridge of a cheekbone and the stretched seams of lips.

“Why?”

The question was too broad and too narrow, for either of them.

“I always knew. Why wouldn't he do it? Where else would he...” Lilith spoke in wracked susurrations.

“You've never said you were searching.”

“Why would I put both of us through such wretched anticipation?”

Mary reclaimed her arm to wrap it around Lilith's middle. “I don't know why I didn't think about it. You told me why I ended up where I did, in that forest of mortal souls... lost to the impulses of violent demons.”

“There was no reason for you to think about it. I've... never wanted you to think about it.”

“You keep trying to protect me from the things—”

“The things I've done to you. To,” (the quick inhalation shook her), “the both of you.”

“No.” She rolled her forehead in argument. “Satan.” She would call him nothing more charitable than that.

Again Lilith shook in her grip and bent forward towards neatly crossed legs. And again Mary urged her on, with a tightening of her embrace:

“When they, your demon, when they found him,” the frown overtook her entire body, and she curled in like a dying beetle against the curve of Lilith's back, “what... did they do?”

Lilith's voice came and failed, hissed and came again, slowly climbing in feminine pitch. “They summoned me. They sent me their location. And I went.”

“No.” The thin word escaped her because she didn't want to hear more, because she didn't think she could take it, and because she didn't want it to be true, where Lilith had just been, what she might have seen.

“Yes. I had to. How could I not?”

“But...”

Lilith cleared her throat and made herself sit straighter, covering Mary's hands with her own which were rigid as claws. “I had to. He...”

“Don't tell me,” she begged without meaning to.

Lilith jolted, appalled at the suggestion. “I would never. Mary, no.”

“But you...”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I...” another, thicker jolt, and their hands reached Lilith's thighs. “I ended it.”

“Now? Just... just now? Before you came home?”

Pulses kept jerking from Lilith's folded stomach muscles, and she nodded. “With these two hands. With the wicked magic in these two hands.”

Mary would not stand for that and interlaced their fingers. “It wasn't wickedness. It was mercy.”

“It was a mercy that should never have been needed,” Lilith husked, forehead against a knee.

Mary searched for something to say, but her mind was filled with gaping agreement for the sentiment: there was no justice if such things were required, and cruelty would never bend to reason. Lucifer's cruelty least of all.

“It's over,” was the best she could do.

“Forever.”

The relentless choking emotion turned into nausea and Mary fought it back, as pins and needles broke out across her face and forearms. Every image her mind served forth was worse than the last, and she could only smear them over and over, like shapes in wet sand, like cursed paint on glass.

Lilith had lost all of her words, and aggressively swallowed each miserable sound which moaned its way up her throat.

Mary wanted to comfort her – to comfort them both – but this was a thing too raw for comfort, and they could only ride it out, pressed together like shells of a mollusk, as the careless sun pushed its presumptuous way through the curtains.

Once was enough. There should never have been a second.


End file.
